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Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

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Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#11

Post by lisper »

I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I always thought that in the end cooler heads would prevail. But we've now done the experiment in a big way and the results seem overwhelmingly negative to me, to the point where they present a credible existential threat to civilization, on a par with climate change.

Maybe someone here can talk me down from this new position. But the evidence seems pretty overwhelming to me right now.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#12

Post by zarkov99 »

api wrote: post #2

If I were running something likely to be deplatformed, I would never consider anything but a multi-cloud solution where no single provider is a single point of failure. It's not that hard to do.

Hindsight and all that. Parler has hosted content no worse than Twitter or Facebook or thousands of other sites. Their banning from AWS could not have been reasonably anticipated. It was an unprecedented act of censorship in response to an unprecedented moment in American history. The world will learn and AWS will likely loose a few customers though not enough to change its policies.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#13

Post by stephankoelle »

nixgeek wrote: post #8
andomar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were refused by Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Cloudflare, what alternatives are there?

Oracle, IBM, Alibaba. On the smaller but still “millions of virtual machines” end of the scale: DigitalOcean, Vultr, Linode. Still have APIs and can give you instances in minutes. Hetzner and OVH also an option for the scale of infrastructure that Parler appears to require, although their “Dedicated Server” offerings (Bare Metal) often take 24-72 hours to deliver to customers. Or one of a thousand places to rent a ra…

Hetzner has usually 10 minutes for bare metal.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#14

Post by millzlane »

decasia wrote: post #10

The thing is, you're always going to dependent on someone in the mainstream economic world if you want to have a web presence in North America. Even if you run your own servers, you're at the mercy of your hosting provider, your ISP, your DNS registrar, and even browser level things like Google Safe Browsing. Any of these can be major points of failure. So yeah, not using AWS would avoid being dependent on AWS, but y…

TBH most "Free speech" platforms will allow anything except fraud, child porn, and calls to violence that violate criminal law. Baring all of that. There are still places online to host whatever you want.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#15

Post by daniellarusso »

lisper wrote: post #11

I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I…

I have to concur, it really does make sense to me why both France and Germany ban things on eBay that is ok in the US.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#16

Post by bhhaskin »

andomar wrote: post #3
api wrote: post #2

If I were running something likely to be deplatformed, I would never consider anything but a multi-cloud solution where no single provider is a single point of failure. It's not that hard to do.

If you were refused by Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Cloudflare, what alternatives are there?

If you still want to remain in the cloud? Shell game. Contract another company to setup and run everything on the cloud side and mask the traffic. Hiding the traffic can be as simple as front end proxies into a VPN to AWS. Or even just SSL traffic. AWS or what ever cloud provider would be none the wiser unless they are actively looking inside everyone's boxes. Which I highly doubt they are.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#17

Post by ghoward »

lisper wrote: post #11

I gotta say, recent events have left me shaken to my core. I thought I believed in free speech, to the point where I started a company dedicated to providing privacy and communications products that were not subject to control by any central authority (that turns out to be very hard!) But watching the events of the past few years unfold I am no longer convinced that this would really make the world a better place. I…

I wrote about why free speech is still important here: https://gavinhoward.com/2019/11/recommendations-and-radicali... .

Basically, the problem is not free speech. It's the social media drive for addiction.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#18

Post by mschuster91 »

zarkov99 wrote: post #12
api wrote: post #2

If I were running something likely to be deplatformed, I would never consider anything but a multi-cloud solution where no single provider is a single point of failure. It's not that hard to do.

Hindsight and all that. Parler has hosted content no worse than Twitter or Facebook or thousands of other sites. Their banning from AWS could not have been reasonably anticipated. It was an unprecedented act of censorship in response to an unprecedented moment in American history. The world will learn and AWS will likely loose a few customers though not enough to change its policies.

> Parler has hosted content no worse than Twitter or Facebook or thousands of other sites.

I disagree. There were open calls for murder on the platform where Parler was notified by Apple, by Google, by Amazon - and nothing happened. Which is the key thing here.

Twitter and Facebook are extremely fast with the ban-hammer, in contrast.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#19

Post by ipsocannibal »

andomar wrote: post #3
api wrote: post #2

If I were running something likely to be deplatformed, I would never consider anything but a multi-cloud solution where no single provider is a single point of failure. It's not that hard to do.

If you were refused by Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Cloudflare, what alternatives are there?

Pick any country without an extradition treaty with the US and buy rack space there.

Parler was easily nuked because its tech was amateur hour not because US cloud providers rule the internet.

Re: Parler’s de-platforming shows the exceptional power of cloud providers

#20

Post by drivingmenuts »

shiftpgdn wrote: post #6
andomar wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you were refused by Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Cloudflare, what alternatives are there?

There are thousands of colo centers out there that will take your business. Sure you have to buy the hardware up front but in the long run it'll be less expensive. The scary part would be fiber/backbone providers denying you a connection.

Ultimately, this will come down to public vs. private rights. If infrastructure, no matter how vital, is privately funded, what rights are there vs infrastructure that is publicly funded. Further complications are infrastructure that is a mix of the two.

Personally, I lean toward private infrastructure being able to set their own rules and if it’s public, then the public sets the rules. I am not sure when it gets to be a mix of the two.

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